#and ALL i'm doing this year is my thesis so it's basically not school and it'll help me so much anyway..

[mylittleredgirl]

i know some of you have been pressing your faces to the glass waiting for me to see this one in particular SO i saw "the nurses" the other night and am still thinking about it!!

i love love love it when characters get pushed to a point where you can almost see their childhood selves pop out, like are they even talking about what's happening right now? or are their 12-year-old hearts just screaming?? i love that margaret's outburst is both irrational (the hostile work environment is coming from inside the house; i was yelling at my tv "baby it's your fault!!!") and so so honest.

[this turned into a bit of a character thesis, so not only is there a readmore, there will also be a reblog soon with the rest of the post because i maxed out the image limit] [edit: part ii now in the reblogs!]

this whole time, margaret has treated her subordinates with a heavy hand because she thinks it's the right and fair thing to do. the rules say this is how it works!

she maintains a high standard of excellence in brutal circumstances, but she's also reactive, moody, and unforgiving. she's often shown on the edge of losing control and authority, she inflames situations by overreacting, and the thing she punishes most egregiously is disrespect (toward frank, toward the army, toward herself). she intentionally underlines the distance between herself and the other nurses at every turn.

from season 3 "there's nothing like a nurse": [all IDs in alt]

really, everything she thinks and does comes from a place of "they're not supposed to like me," but the childish part of her that is completely unable to see her own behavior is confused and hurt because "i'm just doing my job so why don’t they like me???"

it's her job to maintain discipline, but especially here in 4077-land, she doesn't have to lead with the whip. henry was beloved because he was an overly permissive clown, which will never be her speed, but colonel potter has all the same training as she does. he's loved and respected as the Good Regular Army Guy because he leads with discernment and mutual respect.

it's easier for him. he's more experienced, he's respected and supported from above and below, and he has a calm temperament — which isn't nothing.

from season 4 "the interview":

whether she's aware of this as a problem or not, we at home can see how margaret's inability to control her emotional reactivity causes her as much grief as her inability to control other people.

if she were capable of laughing off small slights, hawkeye and trapper wouldn't have used her as a chew toy so much, and henry might have taken her real concerns more seriously if they weren't lost in the noise of daily fits, you know? she rarely started it, so i'm not blaming her for the hostile chaos circus of seasons 1-3, but i am saying she would have had a better time if she knew how to take a few deep breaths.

this description from the script, after the near-brawl in the nurses' tent in act one, is basically her character thesis statement:

and here, when she's reacting fully emotionally, the truth comes out! the reason that she won't be flexible and show compassion to the nurses isn't because of the rules, but because they're mean to her!!

that's obviously a very bad place to lead from. she has enormous institutional power over them, including controlling their freedom of movement, but she feels like all the other girls in school are hanging out together and they hate her. because they are! and they do! the fight in act one boils over when they make fun of her hair, and that sent all of them back to middle school.

and in many ways, that's where margaret's emotional maturity is stuck (which is, i think, why i find her so endearing). she can't see herself. she knows they don't like her, trust her, or want her around, but she doesn't understand how she dug this hole herself, or how to get out of it.

to add insult to jealous injury, one of the nurses (mary jo, who gets between margaret and baker to stop the fight and takes care of the others in different ways) is margaret's age, and the others look to her as their chosen leader and personal support.

and i'm sure margaret had NO IDEA this was the messy truth until she heard it come out of her mouth.

and her emotionally breaking on the "one lousy cup of coffee" in particular…

i wonder, how often does some version of that first tent scene happen? does she deliver their assignments every night? she walks in already defensive, they immediately stop laughing, and then... she either finds a reason to scold them or they ice her out until she leaves. (and they probably start laughing again as soon as she does!)

from her perspective, when she arrived for the dreaded sleepover and they turned out the lights the minute she walked in, it's like they cancelled the nightly coffee klatch just to avoid spending one social minute with her.

i also think the nurses are right when they assumed that she wouldn't have accepted an invitation to hang out with them (and might even have snapped at them for being inappropriate for asking). she doesn't cross that emotional line, even when she should — she didn't know gaynor was spiraling after losing so many patients in a row, and didn't respond compassionately when she learned.

has she ever invited them for coffee or a friendly chat? no.

...... but her circumstances have recently changed.

[reblog with the rest of it is here!]

#margaret houlihan #mash #mashblogging #margaret is a holy hot mess and i love her sooooo much

[thirdnap]

Hello,

Here is the life update of my past 4 years.

I began this blog many years ago in 2012 when I was only 14 years old, and I then slowly gained the courage to start posting art at 17 when I joined the K fandom. It's wild to think that I am now 25!

I was never quite consistent in posting since I only shared my art here whenever I felt like it, but it slowed down ever so gradually to basically 1 post a year for Yata’s birthday. This blog helped me with my fear of showing my art to others as I was incredibly embarrassed of my work for a really long time.

I soon moved to the USA from my homeland and attended animation school for 1 year, and then studied illustration and visual development for 4 years and I managed to accomplish many things I never could have imagined. I graduated with honors this past May, was selected by the faculty and head of department as my major’s trustee scholar, completed my 84-page art book thesis, got a few pieces into the Society of Illustrators, and my school even shot a mini docu-film about me, my art and my life where I got to share my upbringing. Art school was very demanding and at times tough but I managed to get a lot out of it :)

In July of this year, I moved to California from Florida and I’m much happier than I’ve ever been. I come from a very small country so I never expected to get this far in the art world. I drew Yata for fun in my bedroom whenever I wanted to and now I’m in LA breaking into the animation industry (receiving my first credit too!)

the drawings I share here are a very very small part of the illustrations I make weekly. I wish I could share them with everyone as I’m very proud of them but I enjoy separating my fandom life from my real life a little too much! Surprisingly I am working as a background artist at the moment despite never drawing backgrounds in this blog lol. I think many of you would be surprised at how different my work is from irl!!

It hasn’t always been great, so I don't want to make it seem like it's been all perfect. I’ve had many hard times too and at the moment I am extremely homesick since I haven't returned home in a long time but I think these are needed sacrifices.

However, I'm excited for 2024. I'm looking forward to growing as an artist and my goal is to continue to have fun with art as much as I have right now. I think I’m lucky to have a great support system including my best friend @fuurais who has been by my side for 10+ years and I managed to convert into a K artist too <3

Thank you for the support, for the kind messages, and for the excitement every time I post. I am always happy when I think of this blog and the friends I made. I unironically think about Yata every day as he is past being my comfort character tbh. I am currently writing this with full-on orange hair that I've had for a few years now lol.

I don’t think I’ll be as active as I was at 17 but I will try to not ghost this blog completely. There are a lot of things I haven’t drawn yet that I really want to do and I'd love to share those drawings with everyone.

Lots of love -

Tael <3

#k project #project k #yata misaki #misaki yata

[catboybiologist]

Random actual vent that is probably more venty than my usual random little things, but occasionally I have to step back and think how asinine the salary system for PhD students can sound to people outside of academia. I really just want to like... lay it on the table, because it really is fucking dumb and I occasionally want validation that its fucking dumb.

Note that this is all coming from a traditional lab sciences, in the US perspective. Also, I'm really fucking ADHD and have a really, really shitty brain for bureacracy, so this is a rant and isn't really intended to be informative and might be wrong in places, its just me word vomiting.

Let's start with something straight off the bat- grad school isn't really school. It's work that creates value for the university, and you happen to take one or two courses on the side that the university has determined will make you better at that work (your mileage may vary). It's an entry level job, essentially. You create value for the university in one of two ways- you either contribute to research that gets them grant money, or you teach undergrads that pay tuition. We'll get back to how that affects you later, but first lets talk about something else: what the university claims they pay you vs what you actually get paid.

On paper, my income is approximately 3 times as much as my actual, take home income. There's two reasons for this. The first is that I am technically charged tuition by the central university, which is then immediately paid off by the source of my income. In official job titles, that's technically included in what you're getting paid, although most universities don't even bother advertising that. The other confounding factor is that you're literally always considered part time. The exact % time varies depending on your exact schedule, and of course your university, but its actually weirdly consistent even between universities. Technically, the work you do on your thesis isn't "work", and the university doesn't technically pay you to do it. Even though the work you do on your thesis literally generates revenue for the university in the form of grant overhead. But we'll get to that. If you're a researcher for a given appointment term, you're expected to also do research activities that are unconnected to your thesis- which is ridiculous, because there's no lab in existence where the work isn't all interconnected in some way.

Half time appointments are common, but lots of different percentages exist.

So, if you ever see a figure that says that a grad student position is paid at about $80k a year, that's whats going on. The highest take-home income I have EVER heard of in the US for PhD students is $54k, at Stanford neuroscience. I think its a bit higher now, but that at least gets you a ballpark. Most STEM PhD students on the high cost of living coasts are paid 30-40k ish, and in cheaper areas you can expect to take 5k off of that. These are for degrees that usually make six figures on the job market.

And then there's the other convoluted problem- the source of the funding. This is where the academia salary model really has a unique brand.

Basically, when you're a PhD student, you're not working one job for the full 5-7 years. You're constantly flipping between job titles within the university, and who exactly is paying you changes as a result.

The most basic distinction is researcher vs teaching assistant. TA is easy- you work "part time" (but oh my god those workloads are not part time sometimes [although the class I'm TAing now is very chill so its w/e][fuck you molecular genetics at my master's uni tho]), and the department you're teaching for pays for your tuition and your salary as a result.

Researcher is a bit weirder. Basically, each lab is conducted as its own independent financial unit, managed by a Principle Investigator (PI, or to any grad student, the professor/boss/research advisor/liege/monarch/authority of the lab). The PI is constantly writing lab wide grants to supply the core funding of the lab, including the salary of the grad students. Grants can be pretty general, but there are also very specific ones that check in how the money is being spent. These include training grants/fellowships/tbh the name is arbitrary for a lot of these. Those are grants that are written to supply the salary of a specific grad student.

Couple things to note- the university charges the PI in a lot of ways on this. Notably:

They charge tuition on every grad student, as mentioned previously, which under a researcher appointment is paid from the PI to the university.

They charge overhead on grants- basically, they take money out of every grant the PI gets.

If the previous two sources aren't enough, oftentimes universities will pay rent on the amount of building space a lab takes up (although this is very inconsistent between universities)

Researcher appointments are considered favorable to teaching appointments, because they mean you can spend more of your time on your thesis. But, its dependent on whether your PI has the funding to pay you all that, which is a big if. So, every quarter or semester or year or however much your university decides to renegotiate it, you essentially switch jobs, in a way. Obviously its a lot more simple and streamlined than actually switching jobs, but your title, responsibility, source of income, and sometimes your actual pay changes constantly.

And to anyone who has been through a PhD, you're nodding along like this is all the basic stuff, because all this is so NORMAL. Like this is all the normal system, and this is the bare basics of it as well. And it's weird that it's normal, right? Like, most of my career has been tied to academia, so I don't have a fantastic benchmark for this, but this isn't how it works outside of academia like... at all.

Over the course of late last year and bleeding into this year, multiple graduate student unions have had strikes or negotiations regarding pay scale, but its been a very difficult situation for the average grad student to untangle because of how weird the source of pay is. Because technically, even though you functionally work a single, salaried job with slightly changing obligations, what's happening behind the scenes is that you're essentially hopping between jobs every couple of months. In an ideal system, those jobs always have the same pay, but that's increasingly becoming not the case. Sometimes that means getting paid more overall, sometimes slightly less. Union negotiations have made this pay slightly higher overall, but its still a mess of a system.

And obviously, there's paperwork associated with so many of these steps.

So in my last post, when I said "getting a grant", that was what I was referring to- applying for training grants that will guarantee that I don't have to teach extra or get extra money from my PI for the time I'm here. I'd love to get more teaching experience, but ofc I want to do it when I want to, not when I have to. I'm applying for multiple training grants over the next couple of months that will hopefully fund my salary specifically, and hopefully I'll get at least one of them. And tbh, I don't even care that much about teaching, I more want them because it'll dramatically simplify all this for me.

I love what I do to death, but untangling this shit is what gives me imposter syndrome more than anything. I think my arrogant streak shows when I can genuinely say that I've never felt imposter syndrome based on my scientific knowledge. I have felt it over two things- my motivation/productivity (which is a different rant entirely), and the fact that I am really, really bad at untangling the level of bureaucracy required to just... exist here. Just give me my fucking paycheck and let me do my science, and tell me when you want me to teach.

#vent post #like an actual one lol

[mr-jaybird]

actually, reblogging that post about not looking down on community college makes me want to talk about my experiences and career to show like look. you don't have to do what your high school guidance counselor said was best

at 19 (august birthday), i went straight from high school to a four year college. i did really well academically but my mental health was BAD and after two years admin insisted i leave to receive treatment. straight up would not let me be at school anymore (undiagnosed bipolar is a bitch)

at 21 i dropped out and worked for $7.25/hr at starbucks and also got mental health treatment (and meds!!!). at 22 i went back to school at community college part time and knocked out some gen eds (and also a couple classes just for fun, like theater)

at 24 i went to a different 4 year school. i changed my major (to psych), did three years there and graduated with an excellent gpa and extensive research experience (i busted my ass there, and since i took time off to get healthy, it went a lot better!). since i'd knocked out most of my gen eds, i got to concentrate on classes i cared about. my last year i was a part time student and worked as a paid research assistant more extensively, and did a honors thesis. i also taught myself the basics of programming my last year

i graduated at 26 and got my first programming and data science job (in fintech, blegh). it was terrible. my degree was largely unrelated and they didn't give me any training. they also expected constant unpaid overtime. i was just trying to hang in there and make enough to pay my rent. i actually was struggling so much i almost got fired. i had something of a nervous breakdown but stayed there long enough (18 months) to get a better job in the same field

at 28 i went back to the tech side of public mental health health (yay! and my degree is sorta relevant again). i worked for government. their tech stack was...less than corporate, and i was pretty bored. but i did really well there since i was overqualified! but they wouldn't promote me because i had the "wrong" degree :(

i was planning to leave that job because of no upward mobility when i was invited to apply for my current job, which is the head of data science for a public mental health lab at a public ivy university. they had heard of me from my boss's boss at my government job (networking!). i got that job just before i turned 30. my first year there was really stressful because of the neglect of my predecessor. i had another nervous breakdown. but this job was cool about my mental health and gave me a paid leave and i was able to fully recover and come back and thrive. i love what i do now and at 31, i'm getting a significant promotion from where i was when i started here!

the point of all of this is, i did a lot of things people think are "wrong". i took gap years, i dropped out, i changed my major, i went to community college, i had the "wrong" major, i had to take mental health leaves, etc etc. but i'm still successful and happy with my career! when i was working at starbucks and sleeping on a friend's air mattress i thought i'd be there forever. you never know what might happen in the future (good or bad).

if you can avoid having 3(!) nervous breakdowns in a decade that's better than i've done. but listen: i've failed. i've fucked up. i've been kicked out of school and almost fired and i've come back from it! i had to go on a mental health leave from my current job and they are still really happy with everything i've done there (now i'm just working on doing it in a way that's more sustainable). you don't have to be a perfect person to do well.

and seriously, community college saves a ton of $$$ and no one has ever cared i knocked out my gen eds there. you don't have to follow the "traditional" path, you just need to find something that works for you!

[skywerse]

very random question but making the whole recent animatic you did (which was AMAZING btw) how do you feel about it in terms of progress you've made on your art skill? because like I've also very recently started getting into making animatics and it seems like a constant flow of working on the art and personally I've felt a shift in how I approach making normal pieces of art, so I was just wondering how much of that feeling would be there for you after finishing such a big project? I'm sorry if that didn't make sense lskdjfal i just kinda want you to talk and ramble about your thoughts and all during making the animatic sjskla

-🍪

no one's ever asked me about this stuff before, so buckle up because this might turn into a lengthy fucking ramble

to start, if we were to talk about progress, I'd have to talk about it more in retrospective than just my latest animatic. it's been three years since I started animating, and this particular animatic was more of a silly and short side project, I didn't put much thought into it really.

before diving into animation, I had a foundation in graphic design, four years at a tech school. this gave me a strong grasp of the basics and by that I mean visuals, colours, composition, and more. but yeah, when you transition to animation your view on art definitely shifts, at least mine did. because animation, at its core, is storytelling through visuals. so you're basically delving into film, and now you're not just thinking about static elements, you're considering movement, pacing, cinematography, even sound design. and as an animator, you're the director, the cinematographer, the storyboard artist, and the editor. each role requires specific skills. you need an understanding of visual storytelling, character design, motion graphics, timing, and so on and so on! and you're learning them along the way as you work on your projects. I'm learning all that still, and if you take a look at how my animatics looked in 2020 and now it's so much progress. HELL, both in my animation AND my drawings.

if you really think about this riptide animatic in retrospection you're basically seeing 10 years of my hard work on perfecting those skills combined into one silly video lol BUT without it, for me it's just silly thing that I did and I'm just glad people seem to like it, I'm not dwelling on progress here

now, when it comes to how I feel after finishing a project? in general? it's a mix. there's a sense of achievement, sure. like here I have to mention my short film again. I spent a whole year on it, mostly working on my own but with some guidance from my thesis supervisor. the film is 7 minutes long, and I worked on animating it from march to august. and when I compare the start to the finish, I can SO clearly see the improvement, both in terms of skill and artistic vision. BUT I also tend to look back and think about what I could've done better or differently. and while I see areas for improvement, this self-critique pushes me to get better with each project. eeeh it's a bit of a love-hate relationship with my work really. that's how it always been for me lol

#ask #a lenghty fucking ramble #i hope i anwsered your question????? #i lost myself in the ramble sorry lmao #I didn't include my thoughts I had during making the animatic #because it was basically no thoughts head empty for an entire month #there's a point where things come to you naturally and you don't think about it really #i just drew the sillies

[hartshorn-and-isinglass]

So Yeah I Just Got Done Watching The Sudbury Devil

...and it kinda blew my mind. It's somehow the most-unreal and most-real historical film I've ever seen. This is basically a thesis piece on de-romanticizing the period movie, and I cannot imagine anyone else currently in the biz who would even want to try and do that, and that's what makes this such a special project.

Watching this, I was reminded of how people dress up as fairies and elves and go to Ren Faire with the justification that "well people back then believed in those things so this is what their world would have looked like to them!" and let's just say this movie is a bit of a dark funhouse-mirror version of that idea. If we run with the conceit of looking at the Puritans' world through their eyes, it's less glitter and elf ears and more penis magic and Rosemary's Baby. Satan lurking around every corner, horrors beyond comprehension... and on the other side you have the more quotidian horrors of an oppressive and rigid hierarchy, ostensibly the side aligned with God. I grew up in the Evangelical milieu, so that shit hits a little close to home. Maybe one day I'll tell the story of how church life in my teen years was so miserable I accidentally a witchcraft... but I digress.

Admittedly I may be biased because I've watched so much of Andy's stuff and I get where he's coming from, so I don't know what this is going to look like to people being introduced to Andy's work for the first time, even if they are history enthusiasts. Watching a lot of the Witchfinder General's antics helps with the Original Pronunciation dialogue, and Andy's videos on King Phillip's War are a primer on the themes he's working with in this movie. I remember King Philip's War in school being the merest of footnotes but Andy treats it as crucial to understanding this country in all its fucked-up complexity and he's kinda winning me over on that one.

I should note that this movie is definitely not going to be for everyone: this has a level of gore that's on the bleedin' edge of what I can stand and a lot of sexual content, apparently enough that some people had to walk out of the premiere. All of it is in the service of the story, though. So yes, I recommend giving this a whirl when it comes out on streaming/to a theater near you if you can stomach some very literally visceral stuff. It's so much more unhinged and weird than I could possibly convey in a review, I dunno. I'm so glad I got to see it (but EVEN SALTIER that I didn't get to go to the IRL premiere now after seeing what Dr. Justin Sledge brought to the screening).

#atun shei films #the sudbury devil #puritans #17th century values #myth magic and medicine

[finnlongman]

hi, I just found your blog :)

If I may ask, how in the world did you manage to write entire books while also being a PhD student????

Is there a way to not let your PhD consume every waking hour of your life?? :') please tell me your secret

Heh, well, the first thing to note is that I'm in the first year of my PhD, and traditional publishing is slow. So the books I'm talking about right now -- Moth to a Flame and The Wolf and His King -- have been in the works since long before I started my PhD. I originally wrote The Wolf and His King in winter 2019, when I had a full-time job; I originally drafted Moth to a Flame during my full-time MA in 2020. So the PhD is only the latest thing they've had to compete with for my time and attention!

I've always been writing alongside everything else -- I wrote my first novel at 13 and I was writing the whole way through my school years, despite doing a million extra-curriculars. Honestly, I have no idea where I found the energy, but it got me into the habit of writing during lunchbreaks or in short bursts whenever I had the time, and while that's not my preferred way to work these days, it sure did teach me a lot. These days I've got two sets of edits and promo and admin, and the PhD, and my occasional side-gig as a bodhrán player in a couple of trad bands, and whatever other casual work I pick up (today I was invigilating exams), so it's always a balancing act.

But specifically, with these next two books: Moth to a Flame was largely finished before I started my PhD in October, with structural edits done; I was partway through line edits during the first month of my PhD, and then copyedits and proofreading after that. I was doing copyedits over Christmas, including on my phone during a family visit on New Year's Eve. I've been editing The Wolf and His King more recently, with structural edits also happening mainly over Christmas (working on Christmas Day, my favourite) and line-edits happening right now.

Balancing TWAHK with my PhD, or The Butterfly Assassin with my MA (since I sold it at the start of my second semester and that wasn't the best timing), has mostly been about speed and prioritisation. I'm lucky to be a fast writer and a fast reader, so I can get 7k of academic writing on paper in the course of a day or two and therefore keep the wolf (my supervisor) from the door while I run off and do line-edits. Doesn't mean I should, but it happens more than I care to admit. Likewise, I can (and regularly do) edit/rewrite a novel in the space of two weeks, even if that is also not sustainable.

But it's also about being open with my editors (and supervisors) about my deadlines -- e.g. we pulled line-edits for TWAHK forward to March, even though I only submitted structural edits at the start of February and there's often a longer gap, because I'm going to be super busy with PhD work in April ahead of a deadline at the start of May, so I knew I needed to get the bulk of the work out of the way. That means right now, I'm spending more time on writing, but next month, it'll be nearly all academic work.

On really good days I can do both, and usually write for 1-2 hours in the morning, work all afternoon, and then write again in the evenings (this is what I was doing in December with structural edits), but with chronic pain/fatigue and a changeable schedule, that's harder.

Mostly, though, I'm lucky that my adult books and my PhD are very closely related, so a lot of the research I'm doing for the books also feeds into my PhD, and vice versa -- meaning that a lot of the time, I'm multitasking. It was much harder when I was juggling The Butterfly Assassin and my MA, since they had nothing in common; I would basically just focus on one or the other at a time, and was very grateful that we got a slight extension for our thesis submission deadline because of covid or I don't think it would've been in on time.

Oh, and I also don't have a social life (thanks covid + disabilities) so there's that, too. And my house is a mess and I don't eat enough vegetables. But I don't have any caring responsibilities or dependents, and at the moment I don't have fixed hours/work obligations, so that's something.

As for how I used to write when I had a full-time job (and disabilities) (and a social life)... honestly I was definitely writing at work sometimes. And not just on my lunchbreak. 🤫

#answered #kirk-goes-to-gallifrey

[smallfrenchstudyblr]

ahh i should have clarified that i myself don't have a degree (yet). i'm not from an academically inclined background so when i didn't do well in my first two semesters of university (i failed some classes and only barely passed others), i got very discouraged and saw it as a sign that university is just not for someone like me. i then learned a trade and have been working in the field; but i'm interested in going to university as a mature student and i'm going to apply this year for a BA :)

still, precisely because i don't have a degree it really upsets me that someone who used the chatGPT shortcut is a teacher now. teaching high school students is an academic profession, and it doesn't sit right with me how common it is for teachers to say things like "i learned so much useless stuff in university; none of which i need as a teacher"; it's actually really frustrating. then why do you go to university/become a teacher? ??? ????? (i mean i know why, because it pays well here.)

in our country, MA/MSc degrees are required for a lot of positions, so grad school isn't quite as "you're here because you choose to be" but still.. his sentiment is basically, since he teaches high school students it should just be sufficient to be able to teach them, what’s the point of a thesis? like ok with that sort of logic i could have been a teacher with just a high school certifcate. i think tbh there is a wider discussion here about how people just don’t value knowledge too.

he also later said that he sometimes regrets not just paying someone to write it for him and save himself a lot of time and trouble 💀to me that is just the epitome of being so full of yourself. he has just decided that he has what it takes to be a teacher and making him write a thesis is a waste of time because of that. lmao??

also I would like to point out that this guy is not my friend, just someone i met through a mutual friend (and they’re not exactly friends either, they work together💀) i talked about this with my friend and she said that he isn't even the first person she knows who has casually admitted to using chatGPT like this. i guess they feel emboldened to casually admit to cheating because they know that their peers won't report them because that would then make them look like snitches

i'm sorry about venting like this to you; i just remembered that you spoke about the chatGPT problem before

Well first of all: fingers crossed for your BA applications !! Everyone got at their own pace, sometimes you need a few years to figure out how to best approach University!!

That is indeed upsetting that someone who does not value critical thinking and does not understand the point of research/research writing is teaching now. "I don't need it anyway/I did so much useless stuff at school/Uni" is such a dumb. dumb. Argument.

Like, I had to study German and Spanish and Latin and theology. I took the equivalent of AP biology and physics in school and learned how to use a soldering iron and identify rocks. I learned Roman Law, and company insolvency rules, and the procedure to contest a refusal to grant you a construction permit. During my PhD, I had to become proficient in advanced data-driven research methods and 2 different code languages. NONE OF THAT has anything to do with me job, whatsoever. I teach students about the International Court of Justice and some of them are Literature and History majors. I KNOW that their dazzling knowledge in embeddedness theories of international adjudication is NOT what will get them a job.

But it's not about the raw knowledge, it's about

1. Transferable skills: targeted reading, critical thinking, information gathering, writing for different audiences, time management, group work, self-reflection, project management, conflict resolution...

2. Learning how to learn: adapting to new situations, new rules and new logics; switching from one type of reasoning to another; picking up on new practices, new skills, as fast as possible, knowing how YOU best do that: on your own, with friends, listening, writing, visuals, with cues, independently, by teaching...

3. Putting your future work (and honestly, yourself as a person) in a broader context: knowing what the ICJ is to spot dumb and wrong info when you see it. Knowing that it MATTERS that we know different types of rocks, and therefore we should fund research on geology. Knowing quantitative research methods to know when they are used well and when it's bullshit. Knowing that Latin shaped some languages and not others, to understand the limits of translation itself. Knowing how 'generative' AIs work to understand that there is very little about them that is actually 'generative'.

I would evening argue that just being confronted with the sheer vastness of Things and Knowledge and Fields that are not yours has value in and of itself. It keeps you humble, aware that no matter how much you are knowledgeable on your one (1) thing, in the back of your mind, there is the knowledge that there is much, much knowledge you actually do not have and cannot claim to have. OR, in the wise words of Dan Olson on CryptoBros, to avoid being the kind of person that:

"assume that because they understand one complicated thing [...] all other complicated things must be lesser in complexity and naturally lower in the hierarchy of reality"

#this... was much longer than I intended it to be #no sorry for sending this in my askbox!

[runawaymarbles]

20 questions for fic writers!

tagged by @chubsthehamster- thanks!

1. How many works do you have on ao3?

32, unless you count the book covers. I've got 106 book covers

2. What’s your total ao3 word count?

487,170

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Whatever I get stuck on at any given moment. My most recent ones are 9-1-1, Inception, ATS and Hawkeye, but my repeat fandoms are Spn, X-Men, The Old Guard and Black Sails.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

I'm copying chubs and doing my personal favorites, because my top four kudos'd fic are all for the same fandom (The Old Guard) and written within like three weeks of each other.

The Scroll of Saint Barnabas (9-1-1, Buddie, 15k): recency bias, but I had a lot of fun with this one. I also probably drove my girlfriend*and cousin insane during the writing process. Sorry about that. The basic premise is: we all know how time loop fics go, but what if after the loop is broken the character has PTSD from all the things that nobody else remembers? And also what if you get a knotted dildo hooked onto your permanent retainer? *though we've now established consent and parameters for whether we can have sex if one of us is stuck in a time loop. It's always important to have these conversations in advance!!!

What The Moon Was Saying (Spn, destiel, 16k.) It's about Dean rescuing Cas from the Empty, technically, but it's also about Dean working through things he refuses to think about directly, and it's also about the perspective of dead characters who aren't all-knowing and have no clue what happened after they died, and it's also about Inanna's Descent into the Underworld and how many jokes about Sumerian mythology I could fit in there that probably nobody else is going to think are funny but I think are funny, and it's also about what issues Orpheus would have had if he'd succeeded. The central thesis statement is that Margaritaville is thee Dean Winchester Mental State song.

The Mixtape, Or: Six Things You Learn in Thursday School (Spn, destiel, 6k.) I always had this idea that I was going to write a fantasy book of some kind, where the first part would be about the founding of a religion and then the following parts would jump ahead a few hundred years and see how that religion and that original story change in the telling. Instead of writing that book I wrote 6,000 words about a post-apocalyptic religion whose foundational text was the Winchester Gospels, except they don't actually have the Winchester Gospels, so they're relying on collected ephemera and thirdhand accounts. It is also about both academic and online discourse.

The House on Graymalkin Lane (X-Men, background cherik, 92k.) My nice little outsider-POV x-men haunted house fic. It started out as "the x-mansion would be a bonkers haunted house" and then it turned into a love letter to the original timeline (we barely knew ye). It's about the mortifying ordeal of being in high school and also about how all my grandparents died at once and I had a lot of complicated feelings about that.

The Ill-Made Knight (X-Men, cherik, 1.5k) OK so you know that trope that's like "if anyone is going to kill me I want it to be you"?? it's that, but instead of being used as a statement of everlasting love and devotion, it's being used as psychological warfare. And also kind of a statement of everlasting love. But in a fucked up sort of way. Because Cherik.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Yes! I didn't used to but I do now because I always like it when people reply to mine. Sometimes I miss them and respond years later but like... I got there eventually?

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

the whole estate of mortal man. (Black Sails, silverflint, 40k.) Silver is immortal but has a very impermanent self. Flint is mortal and has a very permanent self. There was only one way that was ever going to end and I stand by it.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Of recent ones, I guess The Most Fun A Girl Can Have? (Kate/Yelena, 8k.) They're having a pretty good time for most of it.

8. Do you get hate on fic?

Not since like, high school.

9. Do you write smut?

Nope. Hats off to smut writers, you're doing God's work. It's very difficult.

10. Do you write crossovers?

I haven't, unless you count every Marvel fic being a crossover. And Good Omens show/book. But that seems like a cop-out.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not as far as I know.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes! Some very kind people translated The Punishment of Sisyphus (Black Sails crackfic) and Antebellum (Black Sails, Anne & Eleanor fic) into Russian, Stalefish (Old Guard, Nile-centric) into Polish, and Kidnapping for Dummies (Old Guard, Joe shenanigans) into Spanish. I can only read the Spanish one.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yessss. The #ImmortalHusbands Conspiracy (The Old Guard social media fic) with @phoenix-acid. That was very fun.

14. What’s your all-time favourite ship?

Why would you ask me this. This is cruel. I can barely pick a top 5.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but probably won’t?

The Marvel pirate AU, probably. It's almost a complete story on its own as it stands. There's about half a next chapter written and I could probably us that to tie things up, if I cut out a bunch of things, but I'd have to reread all my research. I did way too much research for that.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Character voices? I hope it's character voices. I watch a lot of youtube compilations before writing anyone to try and get a handle on how they talk.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

The actual romance part of a romance. What do you mean they have to get together after I've set everything up so that they get together? Ridiculous.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I've never done it before, but I respect people who can pull it off. I do really hate that trope though where a multilingual character calls their love interest pet names in their mother-tongue, when they are never shown using it that way (or mixing that language and English in a conversation) in canon.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

....percy jackson and the olympians.

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

Since I listed five favorites up there I'm switching this with the kudos question. Fic with the most kudos is Kidnapping for Dummies (The Old Guard, 3.5k)

Tagging @monstrous-femme @thegeminisage @bomberqueen17 @ellelans @annerbhp @significanceofmoths and anyone else who wants to do it. say i tagged you. nobody will ever check to find out.

#fanfic #writing #op #ask meme

[deancasforcutie]

hi, I’ve just seen your posts about references to queer cinema in spn and I would absolutely DIE to hear you talk more about that- and also maybe explain some of the ones in the posts bc there’s a few I couldn’t catch. hope ur doing well! toodles

(In reference to these two posts)

First of all, thanks for the interest; I feel like I owe a lot of influence to prominent meta writers who've discussed this over the years, which I've reblogged in the #dean is bi and #spn is queer tags, so I feel honored to be asked about this.

It just so happens I'm about to do a full series rewatch and hopefully come out with a long (much more coherent) meta series later this year. The basic thesis: Supernatural's queer narrative emerged both organically as a result of the early seasons' genre influences and deliberately on the part of writers constantly commenting on/transforming the series' foundations. The early seasons started as a critique of toxic masculinity, the nuclear family, and the American Dream, which invariably involves a critique of heteronormativity, but due to their tragic structure never fully proposed solutions to these problems; later seasons, through the writers' good-faith groundwork designed to circumvent and comment on their own external constraints, specifically situated the solutions in queer love and found family.

I'll argue that much of the queer coding and subtext of Kripke era was not so much "accidental" as a result of the series' genre heritage. Being influenced by the Gothic, a genre all about unveiling counternarratives to master-narratives like the American Dream, queerness emerges in the text implicitly as something outside of that paradigm; look at episodes like 4.05 Monster Movie and 4.14 Sex and Violence for some examples of old-school cinematic queer coding. Then you have Dean as a bisexual character, which essentially started with his inspiration from On the Road's Dean Moriarty (likely also James Dean and other figures that reveal the disillusioned American "bad boy" archetype was always more queer than initially advertised). Later seasons, in actively, deliberately queering this text, both transformed it and revealed/made explicit what was already there. And -as exercises in audiovisual audacity like 15.07 Last Call and 15.10 The Heroes' Journey attest- they consciously leaned into well-codified queer cinematic conventions to reveal (and subvert!) how they were made to literally tapdance around it. What results is a critique of heteronormativity that requires the audience to jump through hoops to maintain it as a critical lens, scathingly lampoons their choice to do so, and situates queerness as "what about all this is real" - "[happiness is] in just being", and in queer ways of seeing/reading.

I really enjoy it, in case that's not clear.

Not sure which examples in my posts to highlight, so here are some links to further reading:

Pink Flamingos: x, x, x

Porky's II: x, x

Thelma and Louise: x, x

Rebel Without a Cause: x, x

My Own Private Idaho: x

Ben-Hur: x

Rent: x, x

Reservoir Dogs: x

Brokeback Mountain: x, x, x

Lost Boys: x

Project Runway: x, x

Sesame Street: x, x

On the Road: x, x

Will & Grace: x

Halt & Catch Fire: x

Freddie Mercury: x, x, x

Orange is the New Black: x

The Sandman: x

Hellblazer: x

"Let's Misbehave": x, x, x, x

Thanks again for the ask! I hope this answers your question; I look forward to exploring this in much more depth in the future.

#no joke this series gave me a crash course in queer media second only to Celluloid Closet. and guess which fandom taught me about that #supernatural #spn #spn meta #dean is bi #spn is queer #mine

[studyinquantum]

Hey, i'm @the-cormorant , i am italian and in my last year of high school. I want to study chemistry, but i don't know wether i should study in anonther country or not. (i would be going to either germany or the netherlands, if that were the case). Since you have a bachelor's in chemistry, what are your experiences in university? What would you reccommend?

Hello!

I studied in Northern Italy for my bachelor, my university is not particularly famous for chemistry but it was close to home and I didn't want to move.

All bachelors are basically the same, you do all the basic chemistry subjects (general, organic, inorganic, physical, analytical, industrial) with more or less laboratory classes. If you're interested in being in the lab you should check on the quality of the lab facilities - most of the time labs are in decaying buildings in Italy. Check also the amount and variety of electives courses. Mine were in a small number and very industrial chem-oriented.

I'd also suggest to choose a university with a strong Chemistry Department, so you can have a variety of opportunities for your bachelor thesis.

I would do a Bachelor's degree in Italy and then move abroad for the Master btw.

Lastly, if your interests in chemistry are more theoretical and related to atomic and molecular structure to the finest level, and quantum chemistry, I'm afraid to tell you that's physics. Go into physics if that's what suits you, don't be like me and avoid wasting 5 years of your life :)

#studyingdante #answered #chemistry #studyblr #italian studyblr

[prosopopeya]

Twenty Questions for Fic Writers!

Tagged by @binickandros!!!!!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

26 apparently

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

460,406

3. What fandoms do you write for?

supernatural now mainly, though i've written for house md, spring awakening, and bare: a pop opera

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

these are all dean/cas fics:

inevitable homoeroticism in spanish romantic heroes (spanish grad school au)

like real people do (my return from the spn grave, basically a reaction fic to The Confession Scene)

command me to be well (angsty post-canon dean gets cas back; sort of a love letter/spiritual sequel to my first spn fic, which is also on this list)

flying in circles inside a jar (a classic s5 era fic with some deeply awkward dialogue that i don't like now but i mean this was written over 10 years ago)

some boys are sleeping alone (my first spn fic and basically my thesis on dean's bisexuality that would feed....just about every fic to come after)

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

i try, though inevitably i get overwhelmed (even by like, one comment) and then time passes and then it's just overwhelming and awkward. but i try! it's hard especially when i just am rephrasing "thanks, i'm glad you liked it!"

6. What is a fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

100% something from the house or spring awakening era. (does anyone else remember when apocalypse aus were all the rage for house or was that just me and my friend angie.) a lot of those aren't on ao3 though, so probably the saddest ending over there is hm... "some boys are sleeping alone." or, shout out to my bare: a pop opera fic, still going strong over there: all the stars bend over sideways.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

there are a lot of happy endings to be found now but maybe for the sheer weight of the force behind everything building up to its ending, let me come home. that one or "command me to be well," which i swear i remember someone somewhere saying that it doesn't just relieve the angst at the end, but it luxuriates in the happy ending.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

not really, no, at least not to my face. i've seen some commentary somewhere about people not being into post-canon fic that doesn't involve jack, but i still have barely seen the jack seasons......... oops

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

yes, usually i throw something in there. inevitably it winds up dom/sub-y in some way. my favorite manifestation of this was the slow evolution of dom-y cas in "let me come home," especially when writing from his headspace bc that's not the usual for me. but other than that, my favorite is cowboy's sweetheart

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

ohhhhh boy. back in the day i loved a challenge for the wildest mashups people could think of. freddie from chess/donuts was the quintessential example of this, written in the wake of strikethrough on lj. one of the few that i still allow to see the light of day: thank you for being a friend, a my little pony/supernatural crossover.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not that i'm aware of though someone did put "inevitable homoeroticism" and "command me to be well" on goodreads.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

i've had someone podfic one of my fics! though the recording isn't up anymore i don't think

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

YESSS @marbleflan and i had a great time with:

r/relationships: inspired by an r/relationships post where a guy is sleeping with a woman only for her...husband to walk in on them, oops, and oh no surprise also, he's really hot??????? wait is this gay????? (it is)

perfect match: inspired by the season 8 of are you the one? an mtv reality dating show. the typical premise of this show is to put pairs of people in a house and tell them that they have to find their scientifically, dr. love approved perfect match out of all the people in the house, and if you all guess wrong, you lose money; if you all guess right, then you win money. but in season 8....everybody was bi/pan/queer, so anyone could be your match. it was supremely messy and also great. many key moments were lifted from that season including i think the drunken orgy, the theme dance night, and the intervention. i have a lot of memories of furiously writing/editing my portions of this to and from my in-laws' for thanksgiving while my husband wanted me to, like, participate in conversation in the car.

14. What's your all-time favorite ship?

i mean.................... guess.

15. What's a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

man i started this really great one about dean and cas accidentally arguing about not having sex when they both actually wanted to have sex and i really want to finish it but idk! i refuse to put the dean watches heartstopper fic on here bc i WILL finish that.

16. What are your writing strengths?

i think character voice, through dialogue and narration. i like situating myself in a character's head and feeling things out through their perspective.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

repetition, and like.... plots.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

been there, done that. wordreference carried me.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

lizzie mcguire, i think, and labyrinth. also if i recall, buffy, and star trek: voyager.

20. Favorite fic you've written?

"let me come home." i think it has to be. it has just about everything in it, every thought or feeling i've ever had about supernatural. i'm really super proud of it, and unlike inevitable homoeroticism, i'm never going to feel like enough people have read that fic. like i just want more people to read it. usually i'm pretty good about just going with the flow, the whims of ao3 and what people seem to respond to, and not really being bothered by how popular a fic is or isn't. but man i want it to crack that top 5 list so badly. (it can replace flying in circles. the others can stay.)

if you write fic, you are tagged, but i scrolled through some pages of my followers to look for mutuals in the fic writing game; if i missed you i was just reading too quickly!!!! you are tagged!!!!: @ltleflrt, @blanketforcas, @hauntedpearl, @goldenraeofsun, @jewishdeanwinchester, @bbcphile, @wanderingcas

#meme tag

[scienceoftheidiot]

Hi there! I know you have a collection of skulls and bones, i'd like to ask what is your favorite piece (and why)?

Aaah ahaha well I don't have one favourite but I can share a few. First I need to say I just counted how many skulls I had and

I counted 58 right now and that's forgetting there is one macerating since uuuhhhh last year that I should probably go bac to

Also since I guess not all of my followers knew about this other obsession of mine, I do not hunt, and all my skulls have been either found, purchased on yard sale, given out of school/museum/university collections, or indeed given by hunters but the animals were hunted legally and eaten for their meat.

Also I'm a biologist so handling dead animals and chemicals is basically something I'm trained for. I'm not telling you not to do it at home, but teach yourself safety and beware. I've been patronised enough by people who didn't know I handled FAR MORE DANGEROUS stuff at work than fucking acetone daily when I started doing this and it made me so angry guys I'm not going to do that to you. Just know chemical burns are no fun, especially if it happens in your lungs (didn't happen to me because safety)

This disclaimer done here is the pieces I like the most in my collection, and the reason why :

First roe I found, somewhere in Alpes-Maritimes. I was living there for my PhD at the time. Like most of the skulls I have found, it was when I tagged along while my husband fishing. Somewhere in 2015 I think ? My collection was already started but I had yet to find a buck.

First cat! Same, my husband found it in the river and I was nearby. Same as the roe, it was all clean already. I love cat skulls. You get to see how big their eyes are. This one has spent a lot of time in the river, has no teeth, and I never could get the patina off, but I think I love it because of it too.

My poor husband doesn't really sit well with the idea of picking up dead stuff but he's always been very supportive, and this is a skull he bought for me, as a tongue in cheek joke. We had almost a row because he told me there were raccoons where he lived, and I didn't believe him, because we're in France, and those are North American animals. We have a habit of taking the car at night to go and look for wild animals (fun thing is that it's a childhood thing for both of us) and one night... You got it, I saw a fucking raccoon happily shuffling on the side of the road. Mindblown. Got this skull next Christmas lol. Since then I've learnt there are raccoon everywhere.

I'm just proud of this one (beech marten) because it's the first I cleaned through by myself. A friend gave me a dead beech marten. Fur and all. And now I find this skull is perfectly clean, sometimes cleaner than some that were professionally cleaned. So.

Dream skull ! A young male horse, and considering where it comes from I might even be able to tell the breed (Camargue). One of my biggest, and I just love horse skulls. I own 3 😅 it's the only male.

Last but not least ! I think I told you about this one. Not a skull per se, but eh. It's a mouse that has been found in one of the beehives I worked with during my thesis. Mice creep into beehives during winter because it's warm and full of food, but bees usually kill them. Then they cover them with propolis, that is an antibacterial and antifungal agent, basically mummifying the mouse. It's not fully mummified here, but I didn't do anything to clean it. It smells like propolis and beeswax, even. It's a little sad but also I'm glad the beekeeper who knew about my hobby just saved it for me.

Here you go!! Sorry for the amount of personal information lol. Thank you for asking 🥰

#skulls #dead animals #replies #asks

[docholligay]

One more Narnia connection jumped to me when we talked about the house. The kids go to another world and it’s described like: “…vast rooms that opened out of one another till you were dizzy with the mere size…neverending courtyards…it was all so dreary and so much the same.” I don’t think If have a whole college thesis but I could do an epic high school comparative essay

There are probably so many Narnia things I missed simply because I haven't read Chronicles of Narnia for many, many, years, though I read them as a kid. I'm trying to recall if there was a fantasy series I loved above all others as a kid, because I did read and like a lot of fantasy as a child!

My #1 was Arthurian shit, I LOVED the Once and Future King when I was like, 11, but strictly speaking that's not a kids' book I was just weird.

But a kids' fantasy series in and of itself, that I'm not sure. I thought Chronicles of Narnia was fine, I was too old for Harry Potter by the time it came out, I would have ADORED His Dark Materials--even as an adult I think it's pretty fucking good--but I was too old again, I had a brief dalliance with the Enchanted Forest Chronicles that was very fun, definitely read the shit out of the Dragonriders of Pern, OH! I really loved the Wrinkle in Time series. That did slap, I should reread it and see if it holds up, I think it might.

Anyway, FASCINATED by the idea that you basically put forth without saying it that Clarke read The Magician's Nephew and was basically like, "Hm, I could write this for adults and better" and honestly, she did! I wish more authors would take kids' books and make them adult books, frankly, because YA/children's books often have great conceptual worlds that are completely undermined because they are MEANT to be written more clear-cut and with simpler vocabulary. Because that's what children need and crave. But as an adult, I want the complexity, the difficultly, the confusion.

#Definitely not me writing Sailor Moon again in my head #also I think I really would have liked redwall if it has crossed my path #assuming people on tumblr can be trusted which is I guess a gamble #I'm gonna turn Jewlet on to Garth Nix too i wish he would write adult books :( #I've read his little adult novella and was like GARTH PLS

[fallowhearth]

David Graeber and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, 2021

This is not a review. It will probably be a bit of a ramble about my approach to reading history and thinking through why I bounced off this so many times. This is also about letting myself off the hook - I'm going to let this one remain unfinished. I don't need to finish reading it.

After I dropped out of grad school (highly recommended), it took me a good few years to be able to stomach picking up a history book again. But, I do really enjoy the discipline. There's a reason I wanted to do it as a career. I eventually found a way back in - from YouTube video essays, to a few podcasts, to reading history from outside my field. I had the most success with ancient/pre-modern histories; obligatory Tides of History plug as I've loved all the deep dives into genetic history and archaeology (and gotten quite a few great book recommendations). I don't have any particular knowledge in these fields, I don't have the language skills or context to interpret sources myself, I've never even taken an ancient history course. So reading these I have no option but to basically rely on the expertise of the historian, to see what they say about various topics and about each other. It's the opportunity to read history like a layperson, and hey, it's pretty interesting!

On the one hand, Dawn is engagingly written - I'd call it kind of magazine style? - and tells a compelling story. But, the whole time I'm wondering, but is any of it true?

My impulse when reading something from within my area of academic expertise is to go and take a look at some of the sources myself. It's always a useful sense-check; it's due diligence. History is by its nature kind of subjective. Historians don't just deal in lonely facts (to paraphrase someone whose name escapes me), but in interpretation and argumentation. Everything has been passed through several human filters before a historian even looks at it. So, in a room full of historians you respect, you can have a lively, contentious discussion where no two people have quite the same reading of the source. There's a skill you pick up after a while - you get a sense for the range of defensible interpretations of a particular piece of evidence. You'll feel more affinity for part of that range, based on the things you believe about how the world works, your particular axe to grind, other things you've read, niche academic beef, etc.

I'm confident I've read at least a few of the sources Dawn uses, and I've definitely read within adjacent bodies of sources. So, I have an incredibly strong need to go and take a look at the specific things they're basing their argument on. I trust my own judgement; I want to establish that range of defensible interpretations, I want to see what readings I'd pull out first, I want to see what the distance is between Dawn's point on that range and mine. The problem is that I can't. Even if I wanted to dive back into the archive, I literally don't have any of the institutional accesses that would allow me to. Also I really don't want to. So I'm constantly feeling this itch I can't scratch at the back of my mind while reading Graeber and Wengrow's work.

The broad version of Dawn's thesis is something like: 'humans have experimented with diverse ways to live and organise their societies across space and time, in ways that are not accommodated by the teleological models developed within the colonial context'. I'd say, yeah, I pretty much agree with that! (In fact it's a thesis I'd love to nail to the doors of many popular history writers.) But I get the same sense reading Dawn as I did reading various provocative works of global history (many of which I really like): the broad thesis is generally defensible, but it falls apart on the page-to-page level. Of course I can't actually confirm this since, well, I haven't done my due diligence!

#entering the grad school trauma zone for the sake of posting #anyway I'm open to suggestions for my next attempt at reading #though I think Weavers Scribes and Kings has been on my list for a while

[frannyzooey]

Your fics come HIGHLY recommended and I’m currently binging my way through your masterlist. I’m obsessed with your style of writing!

Do you have any advice for someone who’s just starting out writing? I’ve been a fan fiction lover for MANY (let’s say, 20ish?) years and as I’m finishing grad school, I thought it was time to start exploring new hobbies 😂 I can bust out a multi-page essay or thesis no issue, but I’m finding myself already being super critical of the few paragraphs I’ve typed up so far.

Hey! Welcome! ❤ The fact that my work gets recc'ed is so wild to me! I am so happy you're here!

As a fairly new writer myself (going on the beginning of year two, baby!) I would say: read, read, read. I had a really strong reading base when I started: both actual novels and fanfic alike, and it really helped out in terms of an idea of how to structure something, certain concepts that I was into/wanted to explore, and it also helped beef up my vocabulary (which I am still working on, admittedly).

It's hard not to be critical of your writing -- it's a new skill you're practicing, but it's also extremely personal -- and when you've read fic for a long time and then try to write it, it can be overwhelming at first because you're often playing the comparison game.

BUT: everyone starts somewhere. ❤

When I started, I just tried to write fragmented sentences and half formed ideas, just to get them down on paper. Then, I would try to piece them together, and put them in a coherent structure -- which helps show you what you're missing, and if you need to add anything (in terms of basic pacing/plot). Then, I tried to take those sentences one by one and make them better, single sentence at a time. Is that the word I want? Does that sentence sound right? Is that emotion what I am trying to invoke?

After that, I would usually ask someone to read it for me -- which is very, very hard and I 100% wanted to vomit the first time I handed something over because I didn't want to fail or for them to think I was stupid, but that's where finding your people comes in. ❤ Your cheerleaders, your hype squad, the ones you think about when writing and think "I hope they like this" -- ask someone you trust to check it out and HYPE YOU UP, because we all need it when we are starting.

Another thing I did when I was starting was focus on things I did like to read and pick them apart to see why I liked reading them. For me personally, I found that I am really drawn to simplistic writing with very neat sentences, very clear actions, and quite a bit of dialogue -- and after awhile, because I studied it so much and tried to actively revise my writing to mold into something like what I admire, I found it easier to be proud of it because you can 1) see and appreciate the hard work you put in, but also 2) you already like that style, so you're bound to like your own version of it!

It's a really brave thing you are doing, even putting those words down on paper and I am so PROUD of you. If you want a hype woman, I'm your gal! I would love to read and cheerlead you! Just DM me ❤

YOU ARE AMAZING and WELCOME WELCOME WELCOME ❤

#writing advice #you are so brave and strong and I am so excited to clown with you!